CR North falls to North Penn

Thursday

Mar 31, 2011 at 12:01 AMMar 31, 2011 at 5:14 AM

By DOM COSENTINO, staff writer

NEWTOWN TWP. - What do you call it when one girls lacrosse team stubbornly tried to lure the other into extending its defense, only to have the other obstinately refuse to do so, with the result being that both teams spent an inordinate amount of time standing around killing grass?

"Good coaching," according to Jami Wilus.

"It's boring," was what Pat Toner had to say.

North Penn, the team Wilus coaches, defeated Council Rock North, the team Toner co-coaches along with Carolyn Kacergis, 7-6 in a nonleague game Wednesday afternoon. But the entire affair was as remarkable for the dramatic way in which the Maidens won - Brenda McDermott scored on a restart with 40.2 seconds remaining - as it was for the slowdown, stand-and-watch-and-wait style North Penn deployed for more than 20 of the 50 regulation minutes of play.

"We wanted to play our style, and to our tempo," Wilus said. "We wanted to take control of the game, and they wanted to pack it in, so I guess it was just a battle of wills."

Wilus first had the Maidens (3-0 overall) slow things to a stop with a little less than 14 minutes remaining in the first half, when they were ahead 3-2. NP possessed the ball in the CR North's end, and nobody moved.

For a looooooong time.

Wilus could be heard instructing her players not to do anything until one of the Indians (1-2 overall) came out to defend them. Toner, at the other end, was overheard telling her team not to give in by defending the ball.

And so it went for the next 13 action-free minutes, with NP finally deigning to move with 45 seconds to go and McDermott eventually scoring with 7.0 seconds to play before halftime to make it 4-2.

"We lost our top two players (Molly Doyle and Hannah Plappert, both of whom are injured), so if we run out on them with inexperienced people, they just come in and score and score and score," Toner said. "They can stand there all they want. We were hoping to keep it close and then wait for an opportunity to go out."

The Indians - and anyone else who was there - did a lot of waiting, as it turned out. With about 12 minutes to go in the game and North Penn in front 6-5, Wilus had the Maidens do it again, another interlude of uninteresting strategizing that stretched on for an interminable seven minutes, during which time Toner became visibly (and audibly) upset.

"It's boring, but for us it's a waste of a nonleague game because I want to see how we do against one of the premiere teams in the area," Toner said. "I would rather see them run plays and see how our defense can do against them rather than stand there and watch them stall.

"They're waiting for us to come out on them, and if we don't go out on them, then it's a boring game. But I'm not going to send inexperienced players out to get burned like that."

Wilus, who had done something similar in a playoff game last year against Radnor, remained adamant about the wisdom of what went on - or didn't, depending on one's perspective. Especially since, after CR North tied it at 6 on Lindsay Rheiner's third goal with 2:31 to go, North Penn held it again until McDermott was fouled with 42 seconds left.

She scored the game-winner an instant later.

"You could look at it both ways," Wilus said. "You could say we stalled, but we really weren't stalling; we just wanted them to come out and play us on defense, instead of packing it in."

Even for that long?

"Good coaching," Wilus replied. "It comes down to what style of play you are. We like to spread it out; they like to pack it in defensively. I don't care if we win by one or 10; it's about winning. We won the game, and that's the most important thing right now."

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